Monthly Archives: August 2011

Bullet Lists for Listings in Google SERPs

Recently I’ve seen some info from Google mentioning they did about 500 algorithm adjustments during last year to improve quality of searches.

I would say we’ve seen a lot of effort during last months whether we can call it always “improvements” or “nightmares” is up for users to judge and decide in the long term. However I must admit I was surprised they mention only 500 adjustments we could easily see about 100 visual changes in Google interface and usability and each of these brought new functionality which had impact on how search algorithm works.

Let’s concentrate on one of the recent ones – Bullet Lists.

New Search Engines Result Pages addition of bullet list on Google is extracted from website landing page. The most relevant for particular query page content is no longer string of text in some cases. Google decided now the most relevant is matching offer and inserted just under URL list of items available on this page. On the front of this list we have greyed out prefix in the form of information how many items relevant for our keyword we can expect on particular webpage.

Bullet Lists in SERPs - New Change to Google Algorithm 2011

New SERPs feature easy to spot - duplicate content from Premier Inn? Not really - Look at their prices £30 off now visible on Google SERP - Well done Google :-)

So there are some direct positives for user from this feature already. Of course if you plan to stay in London City Hotel your click is more then likely to go to listing one however this dosen’t put Premier Inn in Good light – does it? After all URL with £30 more expensive offer says “Budget” and there you go guys in Premier Inn marketing vocabulary there is £30 gap between “Cheap” and “Budget”.

Google “Bullet List Feature”  on SERPs Summary:

  • This is an important update for all ecommerce websites putting travel industry, gift shops, any kind of directories, affiliates and vertical search engines  in the spot.
  • Check your setup we’ve seen within lists <li>,<div>,<tables> – Google has them all is only one way to check which is better…
  • Onsite Optimisation of Landing pages more relevant then ever before – Google SERPs one stop shop is closer then ever before – imagine links activated on these babies.
  • SEO architecture – big changes ahead for your category pages – homepage won’t do the job the way.

New Bigger Google Sitelinks!

Google announced last Tuesday on the Webmaster Tools blog that some changes had been made to sitelinks.

Instead of appearing as two columns containing just links to the site in slightly smaller text.

Google site links own the SERPs
The updated version shows the links in full size text with the destination URL below and an excerpt of the meta description which is about 35 characters long.

The maximum number of sitelinks has also increased from 8 to 12.

These new updates are great for sites with a good enough page or link structure for Google to create sitelinks for them, however if a site isn’t structured well enough for sitelinks to appear it could look like your site is pushed further down the SERP due to the sheer size of the new sitelinks.

The average height of the old style of sitelinks was about 150px high, the new style takes up about 450px!

To put this into perspective on a SERP which contains no ads at the top or sites with sitelinks I can see 9 different results, whereas on a SERP which has a result with sitelinks at the top I can only see 5.

There are still 10 results on the page, but I’m even less inclined to click the ones further down (I’m quite lazy).

The lesson for today? Get your site structure sorted!

URLs should reflect the hierarchy of that page in your site and what category or categories (depending on the complexity of your site) it relates to.

Link structure is probably one of the biggest factors in ensuring you get sitelinks (it’s the only specific factor mentioned on the Webmaster Toools blog post).

The two most important rules of good link structure:

  1. Every page on your site should be accessible within 3 clicks.
  2. Ensure there are no orphaned pages on your site (unless you don’t want them indexed).
What do you think of the new sitelinks? Has your site been affected for the better or worse?

Add Images to Tweets with Ease Using New Twitter Feature

Twitter image upload share photos on Twitter camera icon

Last week Twitter released a new feature allowing ou to upload images to your tweets easily.

You can upload any image that’s up to 3MB in size. It will then appear as a link in your timeline and when the tweet is clicked it displays the image in the details pane.

The images themselves will be uploaded to twitter.com but they will be hosted on photobucket.

Don’t worry if you want to use services like Flickr, Twitpic or yFrog they’re still supported by Twitter.

For more information about this new feature check out Twitter’s Documentation on Image Uploads.

London gets Social to catch Rioters and Looters

London looter showing off stolen goods

and the award for dumbest looter goes to...

As many of you may have heard there has been rioting on the streets of London, and just as the rioter and looters turned to social media to organise their attacks the Met Police and other people opposed to the riots have done their bit to try and bring those who are responsible for the destruction to justice.

Here are links to blogs and flickr accounts I’ve found so far with pictures, tweets and other sources with photos of looters:

Let us know in the comments if you’ve found any other sources of looter images.

If you have any information about looters or rioters you can fill in an anonymous contact form on the Crime Stoppers site.

Londoners also used twitter for good when they organised riot clean ups (Check out #riotcleanup) in affected areas. Hundreds flocked to the streets armed with brooms and bin bags to help clean up the mess and destruction left by to rioters.

For more info about riot cleanups visit the Riot Cleanup Site, or check out #riotcleanup on twitter.

UPDATE: MET Police have launched a new site to identify London Disorder Suspects.

Proof that IE users are Stupid!

Proof that IE users are stupid

A recent study by a Consulting  firm AptiQuant has conclusively* proven that IE users have a lower IQ than users of Firefox, Chrome or Safari!

The study conducted on some 100, 000 users took a free online IQ test.

The results showed IE users tended to have an IQ in the low 80′s, whereas Chrome, Firefox and Safari users showed scores of over 100. But if you want to be really clever you should use a browser like Opera or IE with Chrome Frame, those who took the test on these browsers had IQ levels of over 120.

AntiQuant has been threatened with legal action by loyal IE users, but whether anything will come of this is yet to be seen.

*So it may not be conclusive but if you have a lower IQ you’re more likely to use IE

UPDATE: So it turns out this story wasn’t true!